


Spell Speaker

by sistabro



Series: Selections from a Purgatory Bestiary [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s07e23 Survival of the Fittest, Gen, Monsters, Purgatory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-13
Updated: 2012-10-13
Packaged: 2017-11-16 05:11:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/535886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sistabro/pseuds/sistabro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are things more dangerous than teeth and claws in Purgatory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spell Speaker

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you switchbladesis for the beta. All remaining mistakes and weirdness is my own. Mask made by [Dale Dunning.](http://www.daledunning.typepad.com/)

[](http://www.daledunning.typepad.com/)

The world comes to Dean in quick snatches; the path is too treacherous to take his eyes from it for long. There's not much to see anyways: trees trees and more trees. Terrible trees, twisted and tangled and far too aware for his comfort. He doesn't like to look at them, tries to look between the torn and seeping trunks instead for the other, more mobile, horrors in the woods. 

Dean spots it first: a giant dark circle the size of a large beach ball hovering in midair. Not a tree, even in Purgatory trees don't float. 

"Cas," he says and points. They stop while Cas does whatever he does. Dean shifts on his heels, wishes he dared lean against a tree to take the weight off his feet for moment. 

"It does not appear dangerous," Cas says at last. "It may be willing to share information about this place."

"Couldn't hurt to ask, I guess." Dean says with a shrug. They shift course slightly and continue on and eventually the fuzzy floating beach ball becomes a giant head, bronze and worn and full of letters.

Dean's never been a bibliophile on Sam's level, but the smooth curve of the Q, the serifs on the E, it's a message in a bottle from home smeared all across its skin. As he watches, the letters shift and form **HeLlo** across its mouth.

"Hello," Castiel replies. "Do you know the way out of the woods?"

Its skin writhes: **yeS**.

The woods are silent except for a soft sucking whisper as the face rearranges itself to write its messages out in flesh. The letters move faster, longer words and phrases streaming across it's lips. Dean tries to keep up but the letter edges blur and words slip away before he can catch them. 

It's impossible to read, to understand and follow. It isn't writing really at all, the seamless tumble of letters flowing and breaking apart too fluid and chaotic and organic, the antithesis to the orderly flow of words on a page. 

Spelling speak, that's what it is, casting a spell on him too maybe, but Dean can't bring himself to care. He can't look away from the familiar twisting curve of the **s** rolling around the **C** and dancing alongside a **b** and soon it's just a storm of edges and curls swirling across his vision. The whispering grows louder in his head, a numbing blanket of sound that fills up all the empty spaces. He wants to float here forever.

A cool hand touches his cheek and turns his head away. Castiel's irises are very blue in the gloom. Dean rests his eyes on the stillness of his face, traces the pale line of jaw and cheek with his gaze until the dizzying, half trance fades, leaving a hollow weariness behind.

Cas lowers his hand from Dean's face, slow enough that it feels reluctant, fingers rasping through his stubble. His body sways forward of its own accord, trying to follow Cas's hand and Dean wonders how long it's been since he's been touched, since the blackness swallowed them up and spit them out here.

"Dean," Cas says, hand at his side now, a frown beginning to wrinkle his brow.

Dean makes himself stand steady in his boots and does his best to force a smile. Cas's hesitant concern will break him open now, he's sure of it, crack him like a rotten gourd and let all the emptiness pour out.

"I'm fine," Dean says, never so happy that Sam isn't here. He'd poke a hole through the lie with no more than a look and wreck Dean for sure. But Cas, Cas just nods and turns his back and walks deeper into the trees. 

Dean looks once more at the spell-speaker with its numbing whispers and words, before turning away and making himself follow.


End file.
